Joliet II: Warren Johnson eliminations summary

The NHRA's Pro Stock division is arguably the most competitive in all of
motorsports. At each of the 23 events on the POWERade circuit, entire
fields are covered by a few scant hundredths of a second, and every
qualified competitor has a...

The NHRA's Pro Stock division is arguably the most competitive in all of
motorsports. At each of the 23 events on the POWERade circuit, entire
fields are covered by a few scant hundredths of a second, and every
qualified competitor has a legitimate shot at winning the event, leaving
no room for error.

Such was the case during Sunday's final eliminations of the Carquest
Auto Parts Nationals in Joliet, IL. Warren Johnson came into race day on
a strong note, with his GM Performance Parts Grand Am starting from the
third position. In the first round, Johnson combined a very quick .011
reaction time with a solid 6.784-second elapsed time to defeat veteran
Steve Schmidt. This set the stage for a second round encounter against
another long-time competitor, Bruce Allen.

Despite being relegated to the less-preferred right hand lane,
Johnson made his best run of the weekend at 6.753-second, 204.45 mph.
Unfortunately, it was not enough to overcome his opponent's starting
line advantage, putting a premature end to Johnson's weekend.

"Something happened between the blueprint and the result on that run.
According to the numbers, I was late. I'm not quite sure what happened,
and even though some of our data doesn't quite agree, it doesn't change
the outcome, so we'll take our medicine and move on.

"Even so, we're encouraged by our GM Performance Parts Grand Am's
performance. This is the first time we've run this particular car under
these conditions. We've been trying to get it to go straight, and
on that last run, it made a relatively good, straight pass at 6.753
seconds, which was fairly respectable for the right lane, where no one
wanted to run. Overall, we're headed in the right direction. It's just a
matter of maintaining our forward progress, and keeping the mistakes to
a minimum. If we do that, we'll be fine."